Reptile & Amphibian Forums

When ibought my beardie, he was probably close to a year old, so I never went through the baby phase. A close friend of mine is buying a baby (8-9 weeks) beardie today, and we're setting up the cage for him. This is my question:

What's the best for a baby? Calci-sand? Aspen? Newspaper? Thanks in advance! I just don't want to steer this guy wrong..

newspaper.
calci-sand is generally considered to be bad for lil lizards, as theyre too likely to swallow it and cause impactation. besides, newspaper is cheaper and when it gets icky, you take it out in one peice and trash it
and now i must actually go switch my baby from sand to newspaper myself

For a baby I would use paper-towels. For anything over 8in I would use fine, clean, play sand. Calci-sand is horriible all together. Petstores rip you off because they price it like $5.00 for a 3lbs bag. Plus play sand is safer, and its only like $3.00 for a 50lbs bag.
Chris D.
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Hey mine name is Chris and I currently have 1.0 Midland Painted, 1.0 YBS, and 0.2 Leopard geckos.
This is my female.

use butchers paper, or black and white newspaper as said, or plain white papertowel.

when he gets older (10-12 inches) you can give wheat bran a try, we use it, we love it, and i feel its the safest particulate substrate, its digestable unlike sand as well its super cheap at 10 dollars for 40 pounds at your local feedstore, just be sure you get the one prepackaged in the brown paperbags.

I think this stuff is great. You can buy the dispenser for it and tear it off as you need it. It stays pretty flat, its stiff so it doesnt wrinkle too much, and it has an indented surface that gives it a kind of grip. I use this for all my subs and adults. It would work for babies as well if it wasnt too hard to fold and get into your size enclosure. I like plain white paper towels for babies best. Chris
link to the paper